


amour

by pumpkinpickles



Category: Cinderella Phenomenon (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Curse, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Attempted Murder, Emetophobia, F/M, Forbidden Love, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mild Blood, Minor Original Character(s), read notes for trigger warnings !
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 09:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18050153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkinpickles/pseuds/pumpkinpickles
Summary: the tale of a queen who falls in love with her knight, and the knight who loves her in return.(but in the end, fairy tales are written for princesses and princes; and so, happily ever after will not come to be.)





	amour

**Author's Note:**

> a meta about fritz/lucette in a world where magic doesn't exist and status differences actually matter that got out of hand ! tried my best to format it in a fic-like manner since bulletpoints dont really look that good on ao3. it may be messy, but i hope youll enjoy.
> 
> **warning: this fic contains mentions of vomitting (emetophobia), suicidal thoughts (vaguely implied), voluntary ingesting of poison. if any of these disturbs you, please read with caution. be safe !**

* * *

 

 

happily ever afters are not for someone like lucette.  
  
she is crown princess of angielle, the most prosperous kingdom to enjoy peace for over a decade on the continent and she will make it remain so, no matter what she must do. mother taught her to be unkind and unforgiving, but father’s rule taught her what that would cost.  
  
_(‘your very life’; and lucette could die of laughter. her life was given to her country the moment the king placed his crown upon hers. her life was given to her citizens the moment she took her mother’s life._  
  
_her life was no longer hers to live the moment she gave her first cry as a babe. )_  
  
her mother taught her how to be a ruler, her father teaches her how to be a queen - what lucette must be willing to take _(land and gold and unworthy men)_ , to _give (her future, her dreams, her happiness - but what are they, in the grand scheme of angielle, of her citizens’ days of peace?_  
  
_what is she worth that they are not?)_  
  
she knows the answer, through mother’s lessons that bear cruel truth her father never speaks of, but her knight makes her _doubt_.

.

.

.

  
jewels and gold lay heavy upon her, with him beside lightly dull in that scuffed armour and pressed uniform. surely, lucette knows, her worth is more than all the citizens in the land, not just for her riches and beauty, but for the blood that runs through her veins, the royal authority she wields with the ease and capability both rulers before her did.  
  
_(her rule is made of fear and compassion and kind unkindness - blood must be split as must peace reign, one cannot go without another. cruelty is easy, forgiveness is easy, to find the balance is not but lucette rules with perfect grace balanced on that taut line, ready to cut her throat like the executioner’s axe on the council’s ruling at any moment.)_  
  
but when he smiles, a secret crook of lips and a carefully angled head, the perfect fall of hair over face; the worth of a man tips, unbalances, and she finds herself slip, slip, slipping - and it’s roses and sunbeams and delicate gentleness lucette wishes she wielded instead, pretty and perfect and pure like all fairy tale heroines are, like all knights will rescue and cherish.  
  
lucette is a queen, but she is twenty and longing and impervious to the worst and only curse to befall any royal - love.  
  
aching, unattainable love for her very own knight.

 

.

.

.

  
_(‘give none of yourself to them.’ mother gasped, blood dying her lips a beautiful crimson. ‘for they will give nothing back, my love. they took me, but in the end, i return to you.’_  
  
_lucette cannot draw the blade out, hands tight around the hilt the queen had forced into her hands._  
  
_in the end, her mother returns to her._  
  
_and she returns to no one.)_

 

.

.

.

  
lucette will use every means to claw her way to the crown, every man given to her to escape death even for another day, another hour, another minute.  
  
_(bent over choking on her own vomit, steel boned corset catching knives and needles; continuous rescheduled trips to the outdoors; after all, men can be so, so inventive in the ways of killing. yet what is suicide but another method of death?)_  
  
trained poison courses her veins, experimental cuts litter her abdomen, bows and arrows whittled thinly useless; lucette riella britton will give all of herself but her death.  
  
her mother might have taught her not to give a life she doesn’t own, her father might have expected her to die for his cause; in the face of both their righteous morals, lucette swallows another bud of aconite.  
  
palms pressed against lips, swallowing, relishing the bitterly sweet poison.

 

.

.

.

  
fritzgerald aiden leverton is assigned to her at age eighteen. he is clumsy and imperfect and a man by no standard other than the sword, but at fifteen and still feeling phantom daggers in her sides, poisons burning her guts, lucette has no complaints.  
  
not in the way he handles himself, not in the way he fights, not in the way he is, charming and captivating and strong.  
  
only in the way he _intervenes_.  
  
_(“i can’t let you do this.” torch in hand, ready to burn the flowers at a moment’s notice. “would you rather your liege die?” hesitation on one’s part, and the ache of realisation of the likeness of all men throbs through another. “i’ll protect you.” “not forever.”_  
  
_**“watch me.”** )_

 

.

.

.

  
in merely two years, fritz has had her entire personnel overhauled; incompetent fools who turn blind eyes to last minute changes in the menu or unnamed guests who request to be let in at balls. natural charisma, an unrelenting tongue and the favour of the king; using everything and everyone at his disposal and then some.  
  
throughout it all deflecting swords and arrows and daggers, both others and her own.   
  
and it infuriates lucette, how easily he overturns her expectations, her denials and rejections and pessimism and weaves it all into useless, tragic hope a princess like her cannot have.  
  
and it enrages lucette, how quickly the knives are turned against fritz instead; ministers’ cutting sharp proposals of misconduct, advisors’ petty contributions, the maids’ gossips, the blade of his own father.  
  
and it - confuses lucette, how familiarly fritz still smiles, and calls her title with a lilt that bears no trace of anything, anything at all.  
  
_(“i can’t let you keep doing this.” roles reversed; the knight heaving a laugh that nearly goes south. “i was trained for this much.” voice muffled behind a gloved hand, face pale, forehead drenched with cold sweat. even water can be deadly, in a castle. “are you disobeying me?” “on this, i will be.” a slightly lowered hand, a mischievous smile, something foreign and insatiable curling, twisting in the princess’ abdomen._  
  
_“i could have you executed for treason.” “that’s harsh, my princess.” “then promise.” “i promise nothing but to protect my charge, irregardless of cost.”_  
  
_a sword in one hand, her behind the other. fought for and protected and cherished and lucette - crumbles.)_

 

.

.

.

  
fritz is made of soft and kind things that royalty are not allowed to dream of. wildflowers, the brays of sheep, a bookmarked bird feather. untethered kites, whirl of spinning threads, the first bloom of a morning glory.  
  
first, there is jealousy and spite, childish cold shoulders and biting words. knight to e5; restricted, leashed, threatened.  
  
next, there is echoing envy, hidden looks of sullen frowns and biten back sighs. knight moved to its leisure, lengths long.   
  
then, there is complex, contorting, confounding -  _(‘they will give you nothing back’),_ not-quite quiet smiles and lower lips that ache to be bit. knight and queen left.  
  
_(check.)_

 

.

.

.

  
feverish and in pain, still he smiles.   
  
_(“you shouldnt be here.” voice so hoarse his usual laugh is grated to nothingness from tire. “neither should you.” the words come out unintended; meant as a scold, an order, a warning. he is hers to command, but knelt by his bedside, silks spilling around her and rough cotton covering him; imbalanced, neck running an invisible line of red, she cannot find the power._  
  
_polished crystal cold against her lips, but his chapped ones are warm, so, so warm._  
  
_fritz swallows the force fed antidote, eyes closing, breathes evening, calming; lucette wonders if he felt as she did when he first arrived before her, like a spring storm.)_  
  
flushed and oddly turbulent, she finally smiles.

 

.

.

.

  
it is a year after the failed coup that lucette hears her mother again, newly crowned.  
  
the head knight takes more than just the people’s trust in the royal family - and lucette becomes queen a year after her father breathes his last. ophelia is still in mourning, emelaigne already promised to brugantia, rod too young and too occupied with the patrons of his songs.   
  
there is no one else more worthy.  
  
again, weighted by gold and jewels, lucette does not meet fritz’s eyes once during the ceremony.   
  
_(“my queen.” a bow, a light quirk of lips that cannot lift her spirits as it usually does. “i cannot do this.” a sudden low whisper, an afraid admission. “i am not mother. i am not the king. i -.” brilliant, beautiful, ugly red staining her lips, sunken teeth breaking them. a quick thumb wiping the red, then gently, easily, cradling her clasped hands._  
_  
__lucette is nineteen and aching and still feels the grooves of the hilt she’d buried in her mother; but when fritz calls those tightly overlapping fingers a prayer for the dead who do not deserve her nor the forgiveness she still gives, lucette bends over and drips tears onto their hands, and wishes, for the first time in her life, to be worthy of the person before her; holding her gentle and kind and soft in a way lucette is not allowed to dream of.)_

 

.

.

.

  
fairytales speak of both truth and lies - princes upon white horses will always arrive to sweep their princesses off her feet, but not all princesses have a prince voyaging for their hand. it is those dainty and delightful that do, like emelaigne and her charming prince klaude.   
  
lucette is made of too many thorns to bloom into a rose, too many rules and laws to be accepted without hesitation. perfect princes are rare, and only to be paired with the most pure, most perfect of princesses; with a cheerful disposition, an innocent worldview and no blood on her silky smooth hands.  
  
lucette does not mourn for her loss, not when she has never wanted such a gain. but during nights, as she flips through the books her sister left her with, she finds herself tracing over the figures of men in shining armour and wonders if the same rules apply to knights, too.

 

.

.

.

  
still; knights are dirty and scuffed in tunics and dull metal, too scarred bodies that are meant to wither on a battlefield, with too naive thoughts and too bloodied hands, too alluring smiles and too bright a laughter, paired with gentle eyes and chapped lips and kinder words than she knows, she’s heard; that captures, enamours her to him, to a mere knight who will not lose to any prince; for he is no less endearing or kind or  _perfect_ -  
  
but lucette is a queen and cannot be galvaning with a born commoner. her father lost the respect of nobles for his flight of fancy, died for it; lucette will not.  
  
lucette will -  
  
_(throughout the coronation, fritz stands beside, decorated in white gold and an ivory white uniform pressed to his form, a one shouldered cape’s strap diagonally bound across his chest that bears a multitude of colourful medals, hair pinned back on one side, showing off a scar that runs over his jaw._  
  
_he is lightly dull and when he bends at an angle, head tilting and lip curving a secret crooked smile, her chest dips and does not rise for a long, long, long time._  
  
_the new weight that rests upon her head reminds her to let the breath out.)_  
  
not.

 

.

.

.

  
it takes another two years into being queen before the talk of marriage is tossed upon the table. it’s late, by lucette’s expectations. she’d have thought those ugly vultures would have said something six months after her crowning. a king from a nearby country laughs when he hears of her disdain during a ball, and lets her in on the terror and awe the new queen had inspired into countries since her rule. with time, things have only just become stable, he supposes, a too shrewd guess from a small kingdom’s king. if he and his brothers were not already taken lucette would gladly join hands with them.   
  
_(“but i am sure that is not what you are concerned with.” the king smiles, knowing. lucette eyes the man said to be the calm before a storm, warned against even neutral as their country’s stance is, and he returns her look with a finger pressed over his lips, keeps his impassive smile. “may fortune favour the lovers.”)_

 

.

.

.

  
it does not come as a surprise why he is the only one who expresses his support for her. not only is he one of the only royals to have figured out lucette’s little infatuation _(“jack of all trades indeed” fritz had whistled nervously when lucette showed him the king’s letter.),_  in terms of wealth, political and military might, there is only one other country to rival angielle’s. it may be on another continent, but that is of little consequence to a power hungry king, eager to wage war.  
  
and lucette knows all too well the easy way nobles and aristocrats alike give up on their futures, so the lack of enthusiasm surrounding her love life other than to increase angielle’s might is something she’s always expected.  
  
but the sudden pain in her chest at the thought of marrying another, spending her future without fritz by her side, is not something she had ever expected.  
  
_(she pulls fritz to her personal library one early evening, for reasons unknown to even herself. it is decided, the date, the venue, the person. letters are being written as she stands, plans being made, people informed and gossip being spread; her heart is thudding painfully and her eyes are sore and her hands shake -_  
  
_“my queen?”_  
  
_“i’m sorry.”_  
  
_it is the only thing she ever seems to say to him, apologies and more apologies, and she wishes she were smarter, prettier, purer, lovelier, more worthy -_  
  
_then fritz is cupping her face and kissing her, and all that fills lucette’s head is longing and love and **fritz**.)_

 

.

.

.

  
this is not smart at all. they are in a library, and even with it being reserved to the queen herself and the door locked behind them it is not  _smart_.  
  
but in the heat of the moment, hands clutching, roaming, tangling, nothing is clear to the duo but the breathless, flushed person before them.  
  
_(“are you - are you sure? i can stop.” a silencing kiss, a soft, soft murmur of consent._  
  
_and the next word he utters is her name, and the happiness she was supposed to have given up on wells up in her in waves, breaking out of her by the returning call of his name.)_

 

.

.

.

  
everything comes to a promised end after the night. one last, dear memory, and by morning, lucette is in her study, signing the document dismissing fritz as her personal knight, post-wedding.  
  
it will be easier for them both. it will be kinder, she convinced herself, as she wept into his chest and he held her, lower lip trembling.  
  
_(“i’m sorry.” it is not the first time fritz has apologised, but the sorrow that aches in his words is new and vulnerable. lucette shakes her head, burying her face deeper into his chest, his arms tightening around her waist._  
  
_“thank you.” it is the first time lucette says the words properly, instead of conveying it through action and blushes, and it makes the happiness in her ache as much as the sorrow must in fritz.)_  
  
lucette’s hands do not shake as she presses the royal seal over the melted wax. once more, she hears her mother’s pained words, and closes her eyes.   
  
once more, everything of a queen is taken from her, and she returns to no one.

 

.

.

.

 

adding onto her already packed days, wedding preparations only serves to leave lucette with no time for her own at all. the choosing of silks and satin, the decor of the ceremony, the fine details that must go into it, and the continuous correspondence with her soon-to-be allies - the list only goes on and on and on and lucette is glad, if only because she can take her mind off her knight that still fastidiously stays by her side; still there at daybreak outside her chambers, still there late into the night outside her study.   
  
the words they exchange are strictly managed, limited, by their incapability to let go and forget. it is sudden jerked back hands, forced down laughter and sealed away smiles. some days they forget, and lucette stills with a held back sigh as fritz brushes a wayward strand of hair away from her eyes, as fritz’s lips linger too long over the back of her hand, as fritz smiles.  
  
but they are quickly reminded, as fritz smooths her hair beneath lucette’s crown, as fritz lets go of her hand too swiftly, as fritz turns away.  
  
_(the hurt grows and grows and grows until it roots itself in lucette and numbed pain wars in her body every second of every day, burning and screaming and killing her. lucette does not think even the death of either parent had hurt this much. she aches and aches for his word, his touch, his smile, to simply be by his side again. buries these feelings, these needs, deeper and deeper and deeper down until she cannot remember them; until she is asleep and wakes up with tear stains on her pillows, her cheeks._  
  
_presses her palms to her lips, swallows down the screams for a man a queen cannot allow herself to long for, and agonises in the bitterly sweet name she cannot speak.)_

 

.

.

.

  
  
it is a week before the wedding, six months since the night, when a pain strikes lucette’s chest. it is the last of the celebratory balls prior to her wedding, and with a hand twisted into her chest, lucette finds herself wracked with pain she’s forgotten in the midst of her heartache; dressed in complacency and a plain wired corset, lucette curses, loud and uncouth, angry and tired and drowning sadness. everything swims in her vision, blurring, hazing, and lucette cannot tell the difference between this night and the ones of the previous six months; tears are gathering in her eyes, her gut is twisting, her every bone is threatening to shatter and she slides down the side of her bed, the need to live warring with the screaming need to simply let everything come crashing down and end.  
  
she has betrayed her mother, her father, her kingdom, her love - lucette has given all of herself over and over and over and she suddenly understands her mother’s last words not as chains but as warning bells; lucette feels the grooves of the hilt like the petals of aconite, and remembers death is her own to take.  
  
_(but before she can truly make it so, someone is hauling her up, forcing her into a stagger into the lavatory; gloves clattering metal as they hit the rocks, fingers are forced down her throat - vomit spilling out and lucette is made to live another day. when she runs out of liquid to expel, there is a cold cloth gently wiping her mouth, a worried gaze staring down at her. lucette is the one to turn away, this time. “you should have left me.” she says, throat raw and scratched from the scorching bile, from crying senselessly for the man who she leans against. fritz holds her with his clean arm, presses those lips she’s longed for for days and nights now against her crown, murmurs, “never.” lucette bites down on her lip, tastes beautiful red and bites harder. “leave me.” pushes him with an arm, forcing distance between them. “leave me!” a scream that does not break under the weight of the words, a sob that doesn’t translate. the warmth leaves her, his reluctant footsteps fade, and the emptiness of death is all that remains; long tipped from balance, lucette bows down into her skirts that billow silk around her, muffled cries spilling out of her cold, cold lips dyed crimson.)_

 

.

.

.

  
the days pass by in a giant mass, and lucette lets herself be pushed along with the changing days, performing her role as well as any queen should. returns to being lucette riella britton, a queen, a monarch, a beloved ruler worthy of the titles she’s earned and the country she governs; wills herself to forget about lucette, a queen, a monarch; a woman unworthy of the love a clumsy, imperfect man by every standard he is measured by blessed her with.  
  
_(with her own hands, lucette kills the cherished, protected, beloved girl; kills her weakness, her happiness, her mother and father both had taught her she is not allowed to have in their own ways, in their own deaths.)_

 

.

.

.

  
lucette sits by her window, the outfitting of the day done. maids’ dismissed early, servants ordered not to disturb her until dinner, lucette’s gaze flits over the dust that catches in the setting sun, gloved hand fingering the multiple strands of pearls that lace her neck  _(“so you never forget.” her fiance had written in the card of the gift, sadistic in his connotations behind the choker, the collar.),_  and thinks of her inherited kingdom, the inherited grudges. closes her eyes, and forces herself to breathe. to not think of what another would have gifted, would have said, would have laughed and blushed in the way she delights at the new treasure _(a roadside store pendant, a cut flower, a fluttering kiss)_. breath hitching, suddenly unclasping the latch of the choker, tossing it onto the vanity with a loud clatter. the burst of frustration quickly gives way to deflated resignation, and lucette puts away the accessory in a drawer. it would not look good if she damaged a wedding gift on the eve of the ceremony itself.  
  
reaches up to undo her hair, when there’s a sudden bang, then a crash, and frenzied yells mixed with the clanging of swords and armour meeting floors. lucette stares at her door, jumps as a masked man barges in, and sweeps her onto one arm, the other outstretched and wielding a familiar blade. lucette barely has time to speak, to think; the man moves faster than her thoughts can, than her trained knights do. the cries for help not leaving her, instead bubbling, incredulous laughter nearly does; as the queen clutches tighter onto her kidnapper whose hair blends seamlessly into her gown, pure white and silver.   
  
_(he is made of soft and kind things that royalty are not allowed to dream of, lucette knows, but forgets that even the gentlest of creatures turn into beasts when what they protect is threatened, forgets that fritz’s hands are dyed with the same beautiful crimson that her mother and her had both tasted, forgets that fritz is aconite - elegant and deadly and the only one she has given her death to.)_

 

.

.

.

  
“you are not happy.” fritz says plainly, when they reach the stables. he knows his queen like the back of his hand, that his poor disguise is nothing to her, that her calm command over the past months is nothing but a poor facade to him. still, duty bound, royalty, the crown heavy on her head, lucette cannot answer. is not allowed to. the horse whinnies, and fritz shushes it fondly, strokes it’s mane. the saddle upon it is adjusted for two. “lucette.” he says, with a lilt that bears no trace of anything, anything at all. “it’s your choice. i will not blame you for anything. i never have.” under the rising moon, his smile does not wane; sure and gentle and accepting and  _whole_.  
  
and it dumbfounds lucette, how effortlessly he comes to her aid, frees her, loves her, and asks for nothing but her happiness in return.  
  
_(it is the same as when she was fifteen, when she was seventeen, when she was nineteen, and now twenty-one. it is the same. it always has been.)  
_

 

.

 

 

her life is not hers to live, but her heart is hers to give.  
  
_(”take me away.” lucette says, a whisper so loud it is a command that makes fritz’s lips curl in a wolfish fashion, as light as lucette feels, even clad in jewels and gold.)_

 

.

 

  
now, there is simply love, a smile that has always stayed, always yearned, and a girl who has lost her bite, perfectly imbalanced. knight to queen.  
  
_(checkmate.)_

 

.

.

.

  
yet in the end, queens are queens, as knights are knights. happily ever afters are not made for a royal whose smallest sigh can bring an end to another’s empire; in these stories, tales of a knight who absconded with his queen is not a fairy tale to be told.

 

.

.

.

  
in the end, people will tell tales of the day angielle’s queen returned with the body of her knight who met his tragic end saving her from a daring abductor, of the inauspicious day angielle’s queen both murdered and married. he tried to take their queen from them, the people will say, and so their queen took his life in return.  
  
people will tell tales of the courageous knight who gave his life to take back their queen, who died for his kingdom. people will mourn and cry for the country’s loss of a brilliant soldier, but not for long enough; but not as long as the queen.  
  
people will tell tales of angielle’s brave queen, who loses her knight and her husband months apart of each other, and still rules with the grace and authority of those before her - unlost to grief, to pain. a worthy queen, a blessed queen, a queen to guide and rule and lead even alone, people will say. truly, even with all the tragedies that surround, lucette riella britton was a woman who was born to bring angielle to heights no kings have witnessed, people will say, already forgetting their past cruelty to the young queen in the face of prosperity she brought.

 

.

 

  
people will continue to spin tales and stories, but only one will read the truth by candlelight in his chambers  _(he earns the right not by being king jack albrecht cygnea, but by being the only friend the lonely queen had, the only one who had offered his kingdom, his hand, not as a prize but as solace),_  the hand pressed aconite a testament to its truth.  
  
_(the letter writes of lucette riella britton, a woman loved by fritzgerald aiden leverton’s, truth._  
  
_she begins her tale by clearing up the mysteries that surround. the king who tried to own her who dies by her schemes. the identity of her kidnapper. the truth of her escapade._  
  
_she writes of the second life that she ends with a knife pressed into her hands, the first life she ends willingly. she gives her life to him, he gives his death to her. it is only poetic, it is only right, it is the only solution a queen and a knight can find, in this kingdom that will not allow them to be together. he had forgiven her for sinning by doing the same himself, so to this man who has loved her from the very beginning, to the very end, she gives all of herself that he takes; from queen to woman to wife._  
  
_then, years later now, with her kingdom secure in the hands of her nephew, she forgoes her title with death given to her by her sweetly bitter aconite, reclaims the name ‘lucette’,_  
  
_and finally returns to him.)_

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> aconite /ˈæ.kə.naɪt/ ; a genus that belongs to the family Ranunculaceae. it's Greek name 'lycotonum' translates literally to what common men know the flowering plant by: wolf's bane.


End file.
